On Sun, 2003-01-12 at 19:03, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> I've spent some time looking through the kernel source code, getting a feel
> for the style and process before attempting to contribute something of my
> own.
In part that's why i haven't contributed too much of any actual code
yet. I'm trying to get a feel for the code and the users. I figure the
best way is to join the discussion list and follow the patches going in.
> Your attitude against "goto" is perhaps based upon an excellent but dated
> article, "Goto Considered Harmful", written by Edsger W. Dijkstra, and
> published by the ACM in 1968. (A recent reprint can be found at
> http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/.) As you can tell from the date, this
> article predates modern programming languages and idioms; it comes from a
> time when Fortran ruled, and before Fortran 77 provided significant tools
> for avoiding spaghetti code.
It only goes to show that the core of computer science hasn't changed
over the years. While some technology changes, the science itself stays
the same. Much like a physicist should know the outdated theories of
relativity by Albert Einstein (made way back in the 20th century as
well) a good computer scientist should appreciate the contributions of
its founders, and have a good grasp of their core contributions. I'm
not claiming to be an expert in either field, however.
Of course, this isn't a computer science mailing list, this is a linux
kernel mailing list, so I apologize for getting off topic. Let's agree
to drop it here.
-Rob
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 22:00:43 EST